The Sword and the Grail
by Vector Z
Summary: When Yumi decided to start a garden in her backyard, the last thing she expected to uncover was an ancient artifact left by aliens from outer space. And now, of course, Xana wants it...
1. Prologue: Burial

Disclaimer: I don't own Code: Lyoko, and I don't own the _Area 51_ novels by Robert Doherty, from which I drew a lot of the inspiration for this story. That doesn't make this a crossover, mind you.

Now, on with the show.

Prologue: Burial

It came swinging into the solar system at 3/4 the speed of light, powered by an engine that was far beyond anything humankind had achieved by the year 2006. Closing in on the 3rd planet from the sun, it started to slow down, to observe what was happening on the surface. Earth, at this point, had a single solid landmass, one that, to the scientists of the future, would later be known as Pangea.

"Perfect." One of the beings aboard the spaceship said to its single comrade, in a language that no human, if they had been around, would understand.

The descent into the atmosphere was quick and easy. The ship, which looked roughly like a very large, silver talon, was about the size of a helicopter. A herd of brontosauruses looked up to see it pass by, then, finding it of no interest, went back to their grazing. It landed in a region that would eventually be known as France, and two figures emerged from a hatch in the side.

Arto and Canto were their names. Their species was reminiscent of large, red, upright ants, about human size, with two arms and two legs. They had no mouths visible, but they were able to talk nonetheless.  
"Are you sure this is a good planet to hide this thing?" Canto said, looking annoyed, watching the nearby herd of brontosauruses with unease.  
"Yes, Canto." Arto said. "It is far, far away from any contact with other systems. There is no intelligent life to speak of. The enemies of the Zethian Empire will never find it here. Come. We have work to do."

Canto went back into the alien craft. A few minutes later, a golden pulse of light was emitted from the tip of the talon, burning into the ground with ease, at a slant. Arto watched the process with ground-piercing detection systems, and indicated to Canto when he should adjust the laser to make the chamber that was to be at the end of the tunnel. He also retrieved a large, flat stone from nearby. When the burning was done, Canto came out of the ship again, this time carrying a wrapped package.

Together, the two went down into the tunnel. When they emerged at the other end, inside the chamber, Canto unwrapped the package. Inside were several different things. One was a compact, cold fusion reactor. One was a tangle of wires and boxes, which Arto quickly set up around the entrance to the chamber and rigged to the reactor. One was a small table. And finally, handling it gingerly, Canto pulled out what looked like an opaque, golden hourglass.

He set this on the table. It was about the size of a man's forearm, with red crystals all along one rim and blue crystals all along the other. There was a slot in the thinnest portion of the hourglass like thing.  
"I'd sure like to know why we're hiding this here." Canto said. "If its as powerful as they say, then why don't we use it to win the war?"  
"There is only one, and no more can be made. It cannot be everywhere at once. The war is far beyond the point at which it can be won, even with this thing'shelp. We hide it so that they the enemies of the empire will not get their hands on it when the empire falls."  
"Yes." Canto mused. "I see now. That would be a disaster."

Canto looked at it with wonder. The object was a grail, a type of cup. But to those who knew it's secret, it wasn't just any grail. It was _The _Grail, to their species at least. Not the holyone popularized in Earthly myths and legends, but something with a far, far different origin.

Canto then pulled out what looked like a small pen. He aimed it at the back wall, turned it on and started carving out the letters of their language on the back wall with the laser that was emitted.  
"What are you doing?" Arto asked.  
"Writing a warning."  
"I told you. There is no intelligent life on this planet. And even if there was, they wouldn't understand our language."  
"Maybe... but I get the feeling that there may be some someday. They could decode it."  
"Moron."  
"Oh, be quiet. Rig the security device, and lets get out of here. We still need to bury the key."

Canto reached out and pulled one more thing out of the package. It was a sword, made of a light but very strong metal from their home world. It fit perfectly into the slot in the Grail, and was the only way its power could be used. He put it back into the bag, and the two aliens walked out, after Arto turned on the security device and made sure it was powered. The power source would last for a long time; hopefully long enough that the enemy forces would be repelled if they did find it, which was unlikely.

The last thing they did was slide the flat stone into place, so that it covered the entrance to the chamber just a little way into the sloping tunnel. It was placed horizontally, like a trap door, rather than vertically. Canto carved the words "DANGER" and "DO NOT ENTER" on the stone, then they made the long trek up to the surface through the tunnel.

They got into their ship and took off, first to go to what would become the Nevada Desert, where they buried the Sword, then out into space, heading home. Within twenty years, the war would be over, and their kind would go extinct at the hands of their enemies. But the Grail, and the horrible and wonderful powers it contained, were safe.

Years stretched into centuries, and centuries into millennia. Pangea broke up, the dinosaurs went extinct, and much of the land over the hidden chamber was eventually eroded, eating away the long tunnel. By the time an intelligent species evolved on the face of the planet, the chamber was no more than a few feet below the surface, but was miraculously undisturbed despite the rise of civilization in France, and the eventual building of a city in the region, a large abandoned factory occupying the place where the brontosaurus herds had once grazed.

That is, until Yumi Ishiyama and her mom decided to make a garden in one corner of their backyard. Yumi uncovered the stone blocking the entrance in the first five shovelfulls of dirt.


	2. Chapter 1: Recovery

Chapter 1: Recovery 

Yumi wiped the sweat from her forehead. She had been working out in the sun for at least two hours now, helping her mom prepare the site they had chosen for the garden. Her mom, as usual, could not make up her mind about where to place it. Most of the two hours had been spent staking out the area, only to take it the stakes out and start all over again.

It was only now that she had started digging. Yumi wondered how she had been convinced to do this. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now she was seriously regretting it. She pushed the shovel into the soil, and immediately hit something hard beneath the surface. Scooping it away, she looked down to see stone.

"Perfect." Yumi muttered to herself, sarcastically. "Just when we find the right spot, it turns out that there is a boulder right beneath the surface. Go me."  
She kept digging anyway. If it wasn't too big, perhaps they could just pull it out. That hope was quickly crushed. The rock was large and flat, just below the surface, and covering the entirety of the garden site. It was far too big to move on her own. But when Yumi had uncovered all of it, she noticed that there was something very curious about it.

There was writing of a sort on the stone. She couldn't understand a word of it, though. It was complete gibberish.  
"Hey, mom?" Yumi called out. "Can you come and take a look at this?"  
Mrs. Ishiyama came over at her daughter's call, and gave an angry gasp.  
"Yumi! I told you to till the soil, not dig a big hole!" She said angrily.  
"Mom, that's not the point. Look at this stone. There's some kind of writing on it. I can't understand it."

Mrs. Ishiyama looked at the stone more closely.  
"Well, I can't understand it either. Lets just move it out of the way so we can move on."  
The two of them each grasped one end of the stone, and with great effort, they were able to move it out off the ground, and they set it on the grass next to the garden site. Yumi turned back to where the stone had been only to discover a gaping hole, stretching sloping down into darkness.

"What? We move that giant rock only to find this stupid hole underneath?" Yumi's mom shouted.  
Yumi was thinking. It had definitely been writing on the stone, and now that there was this tunnel here, it looked like the stone had been set there on purpose to cover the entrance. She was startled out of her thoughts when she saw her mom take the shovel and start shoveling dirt back into the hole.

"Wait! Mom! lets see what's inside first!"  
"Inside?"  
"Uh huh."  
Yumi ran back into the house to get a flashlight, then the two of them went down inside. It wasn't long before they were standing in the chamber, the first two living creatures to do so since the time of the dinosaurs. The reactor had long since run out of energy, and the security systems did not react to them. Yumi waved the light around the walls, finding more writing along one of them.

Of course, the thing that really caught her attention was the Grail, sitting on its little stone table, reflecting the light.  
"Wow." Yumi said. "What is this place?"  
"We need to tell someone about this." Her mom said.

Then next day, a van pulled up to Yumi's house, and a team of five archeologists hopped out, with enough high-tech equipment to, Yumi, guessed, run the space shuttle. At least that's how it seemed to her. They went about busily, setting up lights, staking out the area, taking soil samples, and a host of other things. Yumi watched with interest. All thoughts of the garden were gone now.

"Mr. Della Robia, did you really have to bring your son?" Yumi heard, and turned to see an annoyed archeologist, talking to another one.  
"I barely get any time to see him these days, Hector, and now that this has popped up here in France, I wasn't going to say no when he asked. Besides, he says one of his friends lives here."  
"Ok, ok, ok. You don't have to explain everything. We've got work to do."

Yumi raised an eyebrow. Mr. Della Robia? It wasn't the same-  
"Hi, Yumi. What's up?" Odd said, coming up behind her.  
"GAH!" Yumi shouted, startled at the voice. She turned around to see Odd, grinning like a maniac.  
"Odd! Don't scare me like that!" Yumi said, angry and relived at the same time.  
"Sorry."  
"I didn't know your dad was an archeologist. And why are you here?"  
"Well, you know. Jeremie and Aelita are working on something Xana related, as usual, Ulrich is chest deep in backed-up homework, and so I've got nothing to do with hang out with my dad. And you, of course."

Odd's dad came up out of the entranceway to the chamber, holding the Grail, looking like he was afraid of dropping it.  
"Any idea what that thing is?" Odd said, gesturing at the golden object.  
"I haven't the faintest idea. I was hoping these guys could tell us that, but it looks like they don't know either."  
"That's a shame."

--------------------  
Xana was watching the scene also. He always had a few live feeds of what was going on in the real world, and was looking at one right now. There was definitely something unusual going on at the Ishiyama household. All the attention, right now, was centered on the Grail. He sighed a virtual sigh and turned the feed off. There was nothing too interesting about the fuss the humans were making, but he could try to take advantage of the excitement. Quickly, he began to plan his next move.


	3. Chapter 2: Weird Stuff

Chapter 2: Weird Stuff 

Odd's dad was shaking his head. He had a bad headache, from working so long, and this discovery was turning out to be very weird.

First, there was the writing. It did not match any known written language on Earth, modern or ancient. Hector had set up a computer program to decode it, and it was making some progress, but only very slowly.

Second, one of the surest ways to determine the time period for the time the chamber was built was to use carbon dating, but it only worked if there was organic matter that they could use for the dating, which there wasn't. Even stranger, they had determined the strata layer the chamber was in as a backup dating measure, and all the evidence pointed to the burial of the chamber happening far before humans walked the planet.

Third, there were the black metal objects that had been found in the chamber. No one could identify the type of metal, and the purpose of the objects was unknown. they had taken one apart, and had found a small but sophisticated laser built into it. No ancient culture could have had that sort of technology... so who had placed it there? And why?

"Would you like something to drink, Mr. Della Robia?" Said a voice. He turned to see Mrs. Ishiyama standing there with a tray of drinks. He noticed that several of his co-workers, along with his son and his friend Yumi, were drinking lemonade. He took a glass and slid the liquid down his throat, glad for the refreshment in the hot summer sun.  
"Thank you, Mrs. Ishiyama."

She smiled and left. He spared a glance for the two children, then felt his headache return. This day had been very strange so far. He had no idea that it was going to get much, much stranger.

-----------------  
"OK. This time its going to work!" Jeremie said.  
He was hunched over the keyboard to his computer, with Aelita leaning on his shoulder, looking at the screen with him. Ulrich was sitting on Jeremie's bed, face in his history textbook. A stack of several other notebooks were piled on the bed next to him. He wasn't paying any attention to what Jeremie and Aelita were doing, as he was much too absorbed in his homework.

The computer whiz and the formerly virtual girl were tinkering with the superscan, since it had broke. Again. Jeremie really hated it when that happened, but it seemed to be one of Xana's favorite tactics. Jeremie grinned when he saw the green plus sign on the screen.

"Great! Its done!" Jeremie said. Aelita smiled, but it quickly turned upside down when the newly fixed scan popped up and indicated an activated tower, which, according to it, had already been activated for ten minutes.  
"Shoot. Looks like trouble. Lets go guys. Can you call Yumi and Odd, Ulrich?"  
"Huh? Oh yeah. Sure."

He pulled out his cell phone. "They're both at Yumi's house, I think. Watching some kind of archeological dig or something." Ulrich said, with the tiniest hint of jealousy that his two friends got to hang around while he was buried in work.

-------------------  
There was a ringing sound from Yumi's pocket. She pulled out her cell phone to answer the call.  
"Hello? Oh, hi, Ulrich." She said sweetly. "Huh? A Xana attack? Where? You don't know where? Ok. We'll be there."  
She turned to look at Odd.  
"Something's up." She said.  
"You don't say. Look!" Odd pointed.

One of the archeologists was running, and screaming, as a pickaxe flew through the air behind him, chasing him and making swipes in the general direction of the back of his skull. The other archeologists stared, bewildered, at the pickaxe, which now seemed to have a mind of its own.

Yumi and Odd watched, undaunted, as specters began to flow out of sockets in Yumi's house, fly out the door, and take over the archeologists' equipment. There were more screams as lights, cameras, digging equipment, and even the gardening tools still lying on the porch table started to attack.

"RUN!" Yumi shouted. The adults in the area didn't need a second prompting. They ran, still screaming, as their tools chased them.  
"Ok. To the factory!" Odd said, and the two of them ran off, in the other direction.

It was very quiet in the backyard when they had left. All humans and possessed objects were gone. The only sign of anything out of place was a single specter creeping toward the Grail, lying on the porch table. Xana was eager to add it to the host of careening objects.

The specter touched the Grail, then flowed into it. It immediately flew right back out, zapped by a mysterious energy.

Xana was puzzled by this, to say the least. He could possess any non living thing, and most living ones, too, so how was this object able to resist him?

He ordered the specter to try again, a little more carefully this time, as he monitored what happed to it. The specter slowly eased itself in, trying to avoid being to forceful. It slid back out a second later, zapped again, but Xana was able to glean some information this time. It wasn't that he simply couldn't take control of it, like with the kids. The object was actively resisting. Theoretically, it was possible, but he had never seen it happen before. It could only happen if the thing he was trying to possess was a very strong computer, at least as strong as he was, if not stronger.

This was an intriguing challenge to Xana. Carefully, he began to pick at the Grail's defenses determinedly, eager to find out what secrets the object might hold.


	4. Chapter 3: Xana's Discovery

Chapter 3: Ice, Monsters, and Xana's Discovery 

"Virtualization!"

Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd dropped onto the icy landscape in Lyoko's Ice Region, and a moment later, Aelita joined them. It had not been too hard to get to the factory, unless you count the fact that every sharp object in town was on their tail, and they were only saved when they thudded into the elevator door and got stuck there.

But although they hadn't much experience with fighting floating pickaxes and knives, the two Krabes that blocked their way were much easier to understand.  
"Yumi! Watch out!" Ulrich shouted, as a stream of rapid fire lasers erupted from the laser on one of the Krabe's belly. Yumi back flipped away from the lasers thwacking into the ground in front of her.

The lasers stopped abruptly. When Yumi got up to see why, the Krabe was no longer there, since Ulrich had leaped onto its back and stabbed its symbol, making it explode. Odd was running circles around the other one, which kept turning around and around, trying to get him in its line of fire, and failing miserably. Odd leaped up onto its back and shot an arrow into the target, and jumped back off again before it could explode.

"Let's go!" Ulrich shouted, and they were off, running down the narrow icy path.  
"Any monsters ahead, Jeremie?" Yumi asked.  
"Well," Jeremie replied, "first there were the two Krabes, then it looks like there are two Megatanks ahead, and then, a ways behind them, there are two tarantulas. The tower is guarded by a platoon of Kankrelats."  
Yumi winced. The last time they had faced a "platoon," as Jeremie put it, there had been at least 18 of them, and she and Aelita had only gotten through by scattering them with a rolling boulder.  
"Xana seems pretty determined this time. It isn't even a pretty good attack." Jeremie continued.  
"Speak for yourself, Einstein!" Odd jeered. You weren't the one getting chased by pickaxes and butcher's knives on the way here!"

-----------------  
"Okay. This time I am going to do it." Xana thought to himself. He eased the specter into the Grail once more. He could sense the Grail's artificial consciousness, waiting for him, knowing that he would try again. It wasn't quite aware of him yet, and Xana was pleased at that. He sprung.

It was a virtual battle, but quite unlike the one his minions were fighting on Lyoko with the kids. This was a battle of pure, virtual will, and Xana's was stronger. He could feel it gradually giving ground, bending to his will. The Grail's computer gave one last push, much stronger than the others, and the specter flew out again.

"Oh no you don't." Xana thought angrily. He flew back in again, ready to thrash at the technology within once more.

-----------------  
Two walls of fire shot out, just narrowly missing the four kids running towards the Megatanks that had fired them. Odd responded by firing several arrows, which clanked off the Megatanks' armor when their shells closed. As soon as the danger was over, they opened again, charged, and fired. The four of them dodged again, and kept running, only this time, when Odd fired the arrows from a much shorted range, they couldn't close in time. The two tanks exploded.

They were immediately confronted by the two Tarantulas, which had been clambering their way along the path to aid the Megatanks. As soon as they saw their comrades destroyed, the two monsters opened fire. Ulrich deflected the shots away from himself and his friends, and from behind him, Yumi launched her fans into the air, which arced downward and slammed into the monsters' heads.  
"The path's clear, Jeremie!" Aelita shouted. "We can see the tower!"

----------------  
The battle had changed. The Grail's computer seemed to have created a miniature virtual world inside the Grail. All around was total blackness, only interrupted by the glowing grid that crisscrossed the "floor." On one side was himself, a swirling mass of malevolent darkness. On the other side was a tall, faceless being seemingly made entirely of gold, with a locked door behind it. One arm had no hand; instead it ended in something similar to the end of the Grail that had the red jewels. It seemed to be looking at a slot in its arm disappointedly, as though missing something that went in the slot. Xana didn't know why, but he suddenly felt very glad that the Grail's computer didn't have whatever went in that slot.

He had good reason to. If the Sword that was the key had been in the slot in the Grail in reality, then it would have appeared in virtual reality too, and then the guardian computer would have been able to take real defensive action and fire the weapon on its arm, cleanly deleting every speck of Xana's being. Xana didn't have any idea of the danger he had avoided, and concentrated on the golden figure rushing toward him.

The Grail's AI tried to grab at Xana's billowing form, without success. Xana gathered himself into a dark ball which lashed out and knocked the gold figure over. It got up and pulled a small gun out of its side, and fired at the black cloud.  
"You won't beat me that easily." the Grail's AI hissed.  
"Easy or hard, it matters not. I will defeat you." Xana said. The two virtual beings charged one another again.

But Xana was quicker to attack. The cloud whirled around the figure's throat, then solidified, starting to strangle him. The gold AI struggled at the bonds ineffectually. A face appeared in the whirling smoke.  
"I have caused chaos for two years, weaving destruction." Xana's face said.  
"I brought death to my masters' enemies for two hundred millennia before being locked away." The gold AI said in a whisper, enjoying the momentary look of surprise on Xana's face. "Know that defeating me will accomplish nothing for you. You will be let through the locked door. You will see the Grail's power. But none of your vast power will let you use it. The key, the sword that goes in the slot, is lost to you."

That did nothing but make Xana even angrier than he was already. He twisted the the AI's neck, and snapped it. It gave one last struggle. "I capitulate to you." It said.

The Grail's intelligence vanished. The door opened, and Xana swept through.

------------------  
"Anyone got any bright ideas?" Ulrich said, peering around from behind an ice block to look at the enemies. 18 Kankrelats stood in a phalanx of three by six, standing in front of the tower.  
"Yumi, can you drop this ice block on them?" Odd asked.  
"You did it before." Aelita politely pointed out.  
Yumi nodded and concentrated. The large ice block rose off the ground, and hovered in midair. It flew over the monsters, which fired up at it, breaking off small chunks.

She let it go, and it fell, crushing half the Kankrelats and leaving the other half scattered and confused. Ulrich and Odd rushed forward to finish them off. The small monsters fell quickly to the blade and the arrows, except for a single kankrelat which took cover behind a small ice formation. With the path clear, Aelita rushed forward to deactivate the tower.

------------------  
Xana looked around with amazement. The space he was in now seemed infinite. He quickly saw that it wasn't, though. The space he was in swirled with data, and Xana could see that it was full of digital recordings. there were two solid, implacable walls on either side. Xana could see instantly that there was absolutely no way to get through them, despite all his hacking power and having defeated the Grail's computer. He could sense the power that lurked behind them, and it was immense, although he couldn't see just what kind of power it was.

His examinations were cut short by a report that popped into his head, sent by the surviving Kankrelat. The battle was lost.  
"Oh well. What did I expect?" Xana sighed to himself. "One thing has led to another, though. I had no idea that this day was going to be so interesting."

He quickly downloaded all the information in the Grail's databanks. He would have time to look over them later, and see what kind of power the Grail really held. Already, he could feel himself being pulled out of the Grail, relinquishing control to the Grail's AI. Xana had been foiled again. But as he returned to the supercomputer, he felt sure that this was going to be the last time.


	5. Chapter 4: Canto's Message

Chapter 4: Canto's Message 

"I'm afraid we're going to have to return to the past, guys." Jeremie said, his voice echoing around Lyoko. "Too many people saw their own tools attack them today. I'll bet there's been mass panic by now."  
"What?" Ulrich nearly shouted, stomping his foot on the ground. "You've got to be kidding me! I've got to do all that homework AGAIN?"  
"Sorry, Ulrich." Jeremie said with a sympathetic smile. "That's what you have to deal with when you battle a super psychopathic computer every day."  
Ulrich just groaned.  
"Return to the past, now." Jeremie said, pressing a button on the keyboard. A moment later, everything was engulfed in bright light.

Yumi opened her eyes what seemed like a minute later. She was in bed, on a repeated Sunday, and the sun was just beginning to rise outside her window. She groaned and got out of bed. The archeologists would come today, just as they had "yesterday", and Yumi had nothing better to do than wait for their arrival. She got out of bed, got dressed, and, after a quick breakfast, stepped outside, where the newly opened chamber stood waiting.

She wasn't going to let Odd scare her this time.

-------------------  
Of course, he did scare her. He knew that Yumi would be prepared if he snuck up on her from behind, as he did last time, but instead, he changed tactics. The archeologists had only barely arrived when Odd swung down out of a tree in the back yard, hanging by his knees from a branch and making an upside-down face at Yumi.

"HIYUMINICEDAYISN'TITHOWAREYOU!" He shouted right in Yumi's face, who had decided to beat the heat by standing under the same tree.  
Yumi screamed, stepped back, and fell on the ground in a sitting position, heart pounding.  
"Hahahahaha! You should have seen the look on your face, Yumi! It was priceless! Priceless!"

Yumi responded by giving a swift karate chop to the branch he was hanging from, severing it from the tree and causing Odd to fall awkwardly to the ground.  
"Ow." Was all he could say.  
"Dork." Yumi muttered.

Yumi began to take a little more interest in what was happening about the point that the attack should have started. Now she watched, a little concerned and a little confused at the archeologists' behavior. They seemed to have gotten gradually more frantic as the hours went by, shouting at each other over the slightest disagreement. Mr. Della Robia was the only one who seemed to be calm. But Odd, knowing his dad better than Yumi, told her that he could be very worried without showing it.

It got slightly better when their friends showed up, superscan fixed, homework done, and eager to spend time with them and see what all the fuss was about.  
"Sorry, Ulrich, but I don't really know why they're acting this way." Yumi said when he asked. Aelita gazed at Odd's dad and his coworkers, with concern on her face.  
"We could just ask them what's wrong." Aelita offered. "And ask them if they need any help."  
"Worth a shot." Jeremie said, trying to be cheerful, but also affected somewhat by the archeologists' frantic nature.

-----------------  
Odd knew the people his dad worked with somewhat, and was not surprised when they were totally ignored. They had asked each of the four for an explanation, and offered help, but it seemed like that they didn't exist as far as the archeologists were concerned.

Odd's dad, though, was happy to vent his frustrations in an explanation.  
"It all started with those little things that didn't make sense," he began, "like the time period it seemed to have been created in, the unknown language the writing is in, and those little black boxes."  
He paused to take a deep breath.  
"We thought that somehow somebody had already been in the chamber recently and sneaked that technology in, but as Yumi said, the chamber was still sealed and buried when she and her mom found it. We couldn't figure out what exactly they were, so we sent them to a specialist in engineering at the university."

Mr. Della Robia stopped again. He had a far off look in his eyes, as though his mind wasn't quite where his body was.  
"Go on.." Ulrich said.  
"Sorry. We got an analysis back an hour ago, and... and... it's a very futuristic security device, rigged to a cold fusion reactor.

Jeremie was the only one who reacted immediately. "A fusion reactor? But technology hasn't gotten that far! And in such a small box? That's insane!"  
Odd's dad nodded. "Yes. We don't know how it was made, or who made it. The metal most of the devices were made of is a metallic compound that does not occur naturally on Earth. On occasion, it has been found in meteorites, but no one has ever shaped it into something useful."

Yumi thought for a moment. "You say it was a security device. But a security device for what? That gold hourglass thing over there?" She said, gesturing at the Grail, which was sitting placidly on a table. "What's so important about it?"  
"I wish I knew." Odd's dad said, rubbing his forehead.

"Boss." One of the archeologists said, interrupting their conversation. Mr. Della Robia looked up.  
"Yes, what is it?"  
"Its the translating program, sir. It's made some progress."  
"What does it say?"  
"You'd better have a look for yourself. The kids can look too. Be careful... If what you read doesn't send a chill up your spine, then you don't have a spine."  
The archeologist departed. Mr. Della Robia and the five kids followed him to a table on which there was a laptop, with a some words on the screen typed by the program that it was running. Beside it was a written copy of the runes on the wall, sitting on the table.

"What's it say?" Yumi asked.  
"Look. There seem to be three parts to it. We translated the first part and the third part." The archeologist said.  
Yumi looked, and she was soon given a stern reminder that she did, indeed have a spine.

THIS IS THE GRAIL OF HARAKAN-ZETH

THE BLUE END BRINGS LIFE, THE RED END BRINGS DEATH.

THE SWORD THAT IS THE KEY MUST NEVER BE FOUND

OR CHAOS WILL REIGN THE WORLD ROUND.

There was then some gibberish. The untranslated part. Then it continued.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.  
-CANTO REDSTAR

UNIT 5525432 OF THE INTERGALACTIC ZETHIAN EMPIRE


	6. Chapter 5: No one must Know, Right?

Chapter 5: No One Must Know, Right? 

"No way." Jeremie said. "I don't believe it! How can you be sure that that is what it says? Its just a computer program! How can we be sure that you didn't make that up?"  
"This is a very sophisticated translation device." The archeologist said crossly. "It can analyze 200,000 possibilities per second, and it keeps the words-"  
"Ok, whatever." Ulrich, who did not want a long lecture right now, said." We get the point. So, lets assume for a second that the Grail, as the warning calls it, is an alien artifact. Why was it buried here?"

"It's possible that they needed to hide it here for some reason. 'the blue end brings life, the red end brings death' is kind of vague, but the implications are there." Odd's dad said. "It must be very powerful."  
"Ok, then, what are we going to do with it?" Yumi asked.  
No one had an answer to that. Except for Hector, who was sneaking into the house, to use the phone.

---------------------  
_The massive spaceship descended, to the screams of the people below. Several, smaller ships rose up to meet it, and the lasers started flying. Explosions rocked the air, and debris fell on the Zethian city. The fight was brief. The small Zethian ships were no match for the huge Yakanomere spaceship._

_With the city's defenses gone, the spaceships started to rain destruction on the terrified citizens below. The only person who seemed calm was standing on a rooftop a short distance from the area the ship was attacking. He looked like a large, upright ant, with two arms and two legs, and with no visible mouthparts. Just one soldier in the army of the Zethian Empire._

_They had been expecting this attack for some time now, and now it had come. The soldier took something out of the pack on his back. The Grail. He slid a short, black sword into the slot in the narrowest spot, and the two flat ends of the Grail opened up, so now it looked more like a large, two ended cup rather than an hourglass. He pressed a few buttons onto the control console in the Sword. He aimed the red end at the Yakanomere ship, and fired._

_A bright light erupted from the red end, crossed the distance between the Grail and the ship in two seconds, and struck. The people on the streets cowered in fright as a gigantic explosion seemed to rock the very planet they stood on._

_When they looked up again, the ship was gone. A light rain of ashes descended to the city, but other than that, there was no sign that the ship had ever existed at all._

The vision abruptly ended. Xana did the virtual equivalent of a blink, and regained his bearings. He was no longer in something that happened a long time ago on a planet far away. This was the here and now. He blinked again. He had been smart, he thought, to download the Grail's records before he was forced to leave. But he had never thought that viewing them would feel so real.

He opened another record. This time, as he was immersed in the experience, he saw no giant explosions or vaporized ships. This time, a soldier was going through the same city, stopping by the corpses of those killed by the ship. He would put their hand in the open blue end, and a moment later, they would get up and follow him. Soon there was a long procession of people following the soldier with the Grail.

When it was finished, Xana looked at another. And another. And with each viewing of the Grail's power, he wanted it more and more.

--------------------  
The sun was setting, and the archeologists were packing up. There was nothing more that they could do.  
"Yumi! You'd better come in now! We're going to have dinner! And tell your friends to go back to school already!" Mr. Ishiyama shouted from the house.  
"Aww, Dad!" Yumi shouted back. "Are you sure they can't stay?"  
"Yes, I'm sure!"  
"Fine."

Yumi turned to Ulrich, Odd, Jeremie, and Aelita.  
"Ok, guys, I guess you'd better go."  
"Is that a MEGATANK?" Aelita screamed, pointing.  
The others whirled around, their first thoughts being how they were going to fight it. Then they let out a sigh of relief.  
"No, Aelita, its just a regular tank." Jeremie said.  
"Oh."  
"But what's it doing here?" Jeremie said, suddenly a little worried again.

The tank was crawling down the road on its tractor treads, gun turret held out in front. A hatch on top opened, and several men in military uniform jumped out, each carrying a very mean looking machine gun. They rushed over and surrounded everyone in the yard, both the kids and the archeologists.

"Which one of you is Mr. Gonzales?" One of the soldiers said gruffly. Hector stepped forward, without fear.  
"Thank you for calling us, Mr. Gonzales. I'm General Dantam. We'll take it from here." He handed a sack of money to Hector.

The soldiers stuffed the Grail in a sack, as well as the alien security device.  
"These objects will undoubtably be most useful." General Dantam said. "They will be very secure where we bring them."  
"Wait, what's going on?" Mr. Della Robia said.  
"Your freind Hector Gonzales here just sold us some very powerful alien artifacts." General Dantam said.  
"YOU _SOLD_ THEM?" Odd's dad shouted at Hector. Hector just grinned.

General Dantam leaned over the kids.  
"Can you keep a secret, children?" He said. Yumi, Aelita, Jeremie, Odd, and Ulrich just nodded bewilderedly.  
"Good! Because this is classified top secret by the government! No one must know that aliens have visited our planet. If anyone here breathes a word, they face lengthy imprisonment, or worse. We'll be leaving now."

The soldiers, with the Grail and the other alien artifacts in tow, ran back to the tank and got in. General Dantam gave a salute, then got into the tank with the others. Then it rumbled down the road away from them.

They brought the Grail to a top secret government facility deep in the mountains, and placed it in their most secure chamber. Behind 12 concrete bulkheads, 12 security doors, each with a different combination, and a good deal of armed guards, it was thought to be safe.

Of course, no one took into account that there may be a scheming supercomputer trying to steal it.


	7. Chapter 6: Dynamite and Laser Beams

Chapter 6: Dynamite and Laser Beams 

Odd really hated Mondays. After being able to goof off on most weekends, he really hated having to go back to school and deal with things like how to find the equation of a line. But while Odd wasn't one to usually pay attention, today he found it utterly impossible. His mind was swirling with thoughts of the Grail, Yumi's backyard, and a newfound respect for science fiction novels.

Keeping the secret wasn't the hard part. He and his friends already kept plenty of secrets that they absolutely couldn't tell to anybody. Instead, it was a dreadful anticipation of what would happen in the near future.  
"All right, class, you're dismissed." Mrs. Hertz said. They were the first words she said that had registered with Odd's brain today. He got up, numbly, and walked out of the classroom with the other kids.

"Hey Jeremie." He finally said. "What was Mrs. Hertz talking about today?"  
"Um... I'll tell you later. We have to go to second period right now, remember?" Jeremie replied.  
"Ok." Odd said, still numbly.  
"Listen, Odd." Jeremie said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You've got to stop worrying. Its not like they're coming out of the sky and obliterating Earth's cities. This isn't _War of the Worlds_. Canto and the rest of his kind must be long gone by now."

"Maybe. But that warning was pretty ominous."  
"I'm surethe Grail isin good hands. We can trust our government, right? Anyway, they don't have the key that was mentioned. The Sword, I believe it was called."  
"I guess you're right." Oddsaid, crackinga smile for the first time that day.  
"Right. What's the worst that could happen?"

------------------  
Several miles away from the city where our heroes live, there is a town called Murphy's Creek. With only one main road, and situated in the foothills of some high mountains, it was a very isolated place. One end of the main road went down to the city where Kadic was located. The other end went higher into the mountains, but nobody ever went up there because of the very threatening NO TRESSPASSING sign stretched across the road about a mile from town. Beyond the sign, the road continued until it hit the military installation where the Grail was being kept.

That night, while Jeremie slept, unaware that his superscan had once again been corrupted, and his friends slept, equally unaware that anything was going wrong, something strange was going to happen.

Mark Osloa, a self proclaimed UFO enthusiast, lived in Murphy's Creek, and often would stay up very late, camcorder at the ready, watching for UFOs. He had never seen one, and wasn't going to see one tonight, but he did see something unusual. Walking down the street, he was surprised to see some wires on the other side of the street break, seemingly of their own accord, and fall to the ground, electrical sparks flying.

Mark considered calling an electrician, but then noticed that the electricity wasn't sparking randomly. Instead, electrical energy was flowing in a circular pattern, and soon there was what looked like a large, circular, glowing hole right in the middle of the road.

He stared in horror as a massive shape rose from the ground. It was like a squat disk with six glowing eyes, supported by four spindly legs. Jeremie, Aelita, Odd, Ulrich, or Yumi would have recognized it instantly. It was a Krabe. Mark did not recognize it, but he raised his camcorder and started recording the scene while hiding partially behind a mailbox. The Krabe was soon joined by two more, and then several Kankrelats, then a tarantula, then two Bloks. More and more of Xana's monsters started pouring out of the glowing hole, and the procession started marching down the main street.

People raised their windows up, roused from sleep, to see what all the noise was, only to scream and shut their windows again, terrified by the robotic creatures marching down the street. At least 200 monsters made their way up the main street, out of the town. The lead Tarantula brushed away the sign without a second thought.

Alarms sounded in the military base, indicating that the perimeter had been breached, and waking General Dantam from his sleep. He rushed to command central, and stared with several other commanding officers at the creatures coming up the road, viewable over the hidden security cameras.

His first thought was that the aliens had come to retake their Grail. Well, they wouldn't take it without a fight!  
"Block the road!" Dantam shouted. A soldier pressed a button, and some strategically placed dynamite blew, causing an avalanche that resulted in a huge pile of boulders right in the monsters way. The monsters stopped, but only for a second, as two Megatanks rolled into position and reduced the boulders to scrap in seconds. Then they continued up the road. They were in sight of the main complex by now.

Dantam gritted his teeth.  
"Get all personnel armed and ready to move! We're going out there!"  
A few minutes later, 200 armed commandos were standing outside the gates of the complex. The monsters stopped at the sight of them. The two sides regarded each other for two seconds. Thenthe monstersflew into the attack.

The first line of Krabes fired the lasers on their bellies at the soldiers, and then stooped down to let the row behind them fire. Kankrelats and Bloks scuttled beneath them, while Frelions flew over them, lasers flying like mad. The soldiers took cover behind anything they could, then returned fire. The bullets, for the most part, bounced off their heavy armor, with the exception of where they hit the targets by chance. One commando threw a grenade into the throng, and bits and pieces of monsters flew everywhere. Three Megatanks opened up and easily obliterated the barbed-wire gate, and the monsters poured into the compound.

Soldiers popped up everywhere, firing on the monsters, and more fell, but the lasers flying everywhere were quickly smashing the defenses to pieces, and they were starting to get the soldiers. Dantam stepped back as the lieutenant next to him was shot in the chest and forced backward, lying unconscious on the ground. A helicopter took off and fired a small missile at one of the Megatanks, but it was stopped easily by the Megatank's armor. A flying manta flew up behind the helicopter and released three mines, which smashed into it in three explosions that sent it crashing into the ground, blowing one of the barracks into non-existence.

Dantam leaned over the lieutenant. He was still breathing. Those things could kill them easily, so why weren't they?  
He got his answer when he saw a Krabe press a claw to one of the fallen personnel, and electricity flow from the Krabe to the human. The Krabe stepped off, and the person got up, only now the pupils of his eyes were replaced with the same symbol that could be found on all the monsters. He picked up a gun and started firing on his former allies.

"We're going to need some backup." Dantam muttered. He took out a small radio, only to have it smashed to bits by a monster no bigger than the radio itself.  
"Why you miserable..." Dantam screamed, and kicked the Kankrelat across the battlefield, where it shattered against the wall of a building. He turned around, hoping to get back to command central to radio for help, only to see a Krabe looking down at him. Dantam raised his gun, only to get shot with a laser. The last thing he saw and felt was electricity pulsing into him.

Without anyone to command them, the battle was quickly over for the remaining soldiers. Everyone surviving was possessed by Xana. Dantam, who was no longer in charge of his own mind, went down to the basement of the most secure building in the base, opened the vault, and took the Grail. Then all the surviving monsters and the possessed humans loaded into the transport helicopters and flew off, leaving nothing but ruins.

In a virtual world located in a factory several miles away, a tower glowed a malevolent red. The intelligence controlling it had one word on his mind:

Success.


	8. Chapter 7: Bad News

Chapter 7: Bad News 

Jeremie was awaken by Sky Radio at 7:30, on the dot, just as he had programmed his alarm to do. But while he usually heard a song playing, this time there was a news report just starting. At first Jeremie wasn't paying much attention, but slowly, he began to be transfixed by it in horror.

"Our primary story today isabout therecent strange happenings that happened some distance north of here in a town in the mountains called Murphy's Creek. Late last night, a bizarre electrical failure resulted in at least 200 monstrous robots rising out of the ground, in the middle of the street, according to the local townspeople.

The robots marched down main street, and from where I am standing, I can clearly make out the footprints their metal left in the asphalt. They went higher into the mountains, and the locals reported strange flashes of light and the sounds of gunfire from above, as well as a blast of dynamite.

Police dispatched this morning found a secret military base in the mountains, wrecked, with clear signs of battle. 50 of the robots' 'corpses' have been recovered and are being placed under careful study, and the most significant discovery so far is that they were designed to fire laser beams. There is no sign of the soldiers manning the base, but it is our hope that they are alive. The government official position as of now is that the said military base does not actually exist, but that is expected to change. We'll have more on this story as it comes out."

Jeremie didn't hear the last part. He was too busy frantically getting dressed and dashing out the door.

------------------  
"Hey, Ulrich, Aelita, have you seen Jeremie?" Odd asked. Aelita and Ulrich began to shake their heads, but they didn't get to finish, for Jeremie had just burst through the doors on one end of the cafeteria and Yumi had just burst through the doors on the other end. They screeched to a halt in front of one another.  
"Bad news!" They both said at once. In response to her friends' questioning looks, Yumi slammed something down on the table they were sitting at.

It was a newspaper, one that Yumi had brought from home. There was a big picture displaying a police officer standing next to a slightly mangled and deactivated Krabe. The headline screamed KILLER ROBOTS ATTACK SECRET MILITARY BASE.

"That is bad news." Ulrich said, stating the obvious for everyone.  
"Well, don't just sit there!" Jeremie exclaimed. "We've got to go to the factory now!"

----------------  
"Well, Jeremie?" Aelita asked.  
"This is insane. Xana corrupted the superscan AGAIN!"  
"That thing has become much too vulnerable to hacking, Jeremie." Odd said. "Maybe you need to create an ultrascan instead." He joked.  
"Good idea." Jeremie mused, not realizing that Odd was joking, and so taking him seriously instead. "But for another time. This will only take a minute to fix..."

The scan popped up, clearly showing an activated tower in the desert region.  
"What I don't get," Yumi said, "Is why Xana would bother to attack a military base?"  
"I don't get it either." Jeremie said. He turned the supercalculator's TV capability on, hoping for information. The screen was currently playing the footage Mark, the UFO enthusiast, had shot of the monsters emerging, while a calm voice spoke in the background.

"As you can see here, the robots were not dropped off by UFOs, as some have claimed, emerging instead from a strange electrical anomaly. Why they attacked the military base is still unknown. The search for General Dantam and the 200 soldiers under his command is still underway." the reporter said.

"Hey, Jeremie," Aelita said, "Wasn't General Dantam that guy who took the Grail?"  
"Why yes, he..." Jeremie broke off, sudden understanding dawning on him.  
"What's the matter Jeremie?" Aelita asked, a little concerned at Jeremie's expression.  
"I think I've got it! Xana attacked the base so that he could steal the Grail!"  
"What?" Yumi exclaimed. "But how could he have known about it?"  
"He must have seen it, maybe tried to infect it, during the attack with the flying pickaxes. Anyway, he must know of its power somehow to want to steal it, and if the Grail is really as powerful as Canto's warning implies, then we're in big trouble."

Jeremie started typing furiously.  
"Should we go to the scanners?" Yumi asked, a very serious edge to her voice.  
"I don't think that's a good idea. I was a little suspicious about the disappearance of the military personnel, so I looked around for sources of Xana's activity. And I found one." Jeremie pointed to the screen, where a black and green map of the Earth's surface was displayed. He was pointing to four blinking red dots.

"What are those?" Yumi asked.  
"Helicopters. Big ones, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and heading west toward the United States. Helicopters like those don't carry enough fuel to cross oceans on their own, so Xana must be keeping them in the air by his own power, not the helicopters'. If my guess is correct, then those vehicles contain the rest of the monsters and the soldiers kidnapped from the military base. I'm sure that they're all possessed."  
"Xana couldn't possess 200 people at once." Odd pointed out.  
"Not directly, no, but he could have used the monsters as a carrier for his virus. Remember Kiwi and the zombies? Its probably similar to that. Anyway, the point is, if we deactivate the tower now, they will crash into the ocean and drown, and I'm sure we don't want that on our conscience."  
They all winced, since Jeremie had a good point there.

"So what are we going to do?" Ulrich asked. "And why are they heading west?"  
"I don't know for sure, but maybe the Grail somehow told Xana where the Sword was hidden, and it must be somewhere in the US. As for what we're going to do, you three are going to chase them and try and stop them. Aelita and I will stay here and wait till its safe, then I'll transfer her so she can deactivate the tower. We'll stay in touch by cell phone."  
"But Jeremie, what about the monsters on Lyoko? We can't send Aelita there unprotected! And what do you mean 'chase them and try to stop them'? _how?_" Yumi objected angrily, growing frustrated, for every second they wasted here was spent by Xana getting closer to his target.

"Well, I agree with you about sending Aelita unprotected, but don't worry, she won't be that way." Jeremie said. Yumi opened her mouth again, but Jeremie interrupted her before she could speak again. "Don't worry. I'm going to use a trick I learned from Franz Hopper. I was hoping I would never have to use it, but, you know the saying. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Aelita, I hope you don't mind if your protectors aren't, well, human."

Aelita cracked a smile, as her mind grappled with a mental image of three tarantulas standing in front of her, blasting away at Xana's defenders.  
"You still haven't told us how we're supposed to stop the helicopters." Ulrich said impatiently.  
Jeremie grinned. "Leave that to me."


	9. Chapter 8: Not Your Average Terrorist

Chapter 8: Not Your Average Terrorist 

"Sir." A man said, as he watched the radar screen carefully.  
"Yes?" His commanding officer said, coming over.  
The two men were in a room at the Pentagon in Washington, in an area reserved for watching the airspace over Washington DC. The man at the desk seemed concerned.  
"We've got four flying objects coming from the east, entering restricted airspace."  
"Oh really? Can you identify them?"  
"Yes sir. They seem to be large helicopters. Military issue, I'm afraid."  
"Contact them."

The man at the desk pulled up a communication radio and sent a message to the helicopters.  
"Unknown vehicles, you are entering restricted airspace. You are ordered to head north and land immediately." He said into the radio.  
No response. The blips on the radar screen continued moving west.  
"Unknown vehicles, I repeat, you are entering restricted airspace. Land now or hostile action will be taken."  
The radio crackled to life. Then a voice came out of it.

"Foolish humans. Do not believe that you can stray us from our purpose." It said. The voice was a man's, but it had a strangely distorted and electrical air about it. No more came.  
The officer was struck by a combination of fear and fury. There were few places in the world that had not heard of the terrorist attacks that had happened to the USA several years ago, and in the nation's capitol, there was always the fear that they might strike again. That was why all planes flying over the capitol were monitored closely to make sure that they were where they were supposed to be at all times. The last thing they wanted was a plane being deliberately crashed into the White House or the Capitol Building.  
"Launch the fighter jets." The officer shouted.

Although the airfield was miles away, the fighter jets, screaming through the air at hundreds of miles per hour, crossed the distance to where the helicopters were in just two minutes. The pilot of the lead jet made one last attempt to contact the pilots of the helicopters to get them to turn around.  
"Attention! You are ordered to land now! If you do not comply, you will be shot down!"  
No response. They were nearing the rear helicopter. There is never any way for a helicopter to be faster than a jet. They were sitting ducks.  
"Launch missiles."

Simultaneously, with the military precision of the US Air force, eight missiles shot from the fighter jets toward the four helicopters.

Simultaneously, the eight missiles smashed into a black force field that surrounded the helicopters completely. The shields went down, showing the astounded pilots four unscathed flyers.

"It didn't work!" Came the reportin over the radio. The pilot's voice was almost frantic. "They've got some kind of force field!"  
The officer bit back a heartfelt curse.  
"Try again!"

A new set of missiles shot from the jets. Once again, the helicopters were surrounded by the force field. Then, to the confusion of the pilots, the force field around one helicopter gathered itself into a ball, and their confusion turned to horror as Xana's dark energy lashed out like a fist, colliding with one of the jets. It crumpled like tinfoil as the pilot bailed out. Seconds later, the falling wreckage exploded in a ball of flame.

The dark energy lashed out three more times, as the jets fired a third set of missiles. The missiles collided with the ball of energy and exploded, and a few seconds later, three more falling wrecks joined the first.

The pilot of the first jet looked about to make sure that his comrades had all gotten out safely. The parachutes of the four pilots were all there. Then he turned to look at the helicopters. They had slowed down for some reason. The back door of one of the flying vehicles opened.  
"WHAT IS THAT?" He shrieked.

Standing in the doorway was a horror he could scarcely imagine. It had a bulbous, white head with a triple-ringed symbol on it, which extended down into a snout with six narrow red eyes on it. The body seemed to have a brown, almost robotic exoskeleton, and four organic looking limbs extended from the torso, each encased in a metal "shoe." The pilot estimated that if it stood on its hind legs, it would be nearly twice as tall as a human.

The Tarantula raised its arms, and the pilot realized to his horror that they were not shoes, but the barrels of guns attached directly to the arms. The monster started firing lasers, and in a few seconds the four parachutes were shot full of holes, and the four pilots dropped like stones.  
By the time they remembered to activate their backup parachutes, the helicopters were speeding away, as the creature taunted them. In a few minutes, they were flying out of Washington, to the bewilderment of those at the Pentagon. Xana had more important matters to attend to than them.

-------------------------  
The stone landed in the water with a plunk. The surface rippled, then the rock was gone. Odd groaned, and reached for another stone.  
"Face it Odd." Ulrich called. "You're no good at skipping stones."  
"You're just jealous of my skill!" Odd shot back.  
Odd was sitting on the edge of the factory bridge, trying to skip stones in the water. Ulrich and Yumi were sparring instead to pass the time. They had been told by Jeremie to wait on the bridge until he and Aelita finished.

"What's taking Einstein so long?" Odd grumbled. He reached for another stone, just as a familiar sound came from the entrance to the factory.  
The three of them felt their eyes open wide as the overbike and the overwing coasted out of the factory entrance. Aelita was piloting the overwing, and carrying the overboard on her shoulder. Jeremie was riding the overbike, and had a cardboard box in sitting behind him.

"No way." Yumi said.  
"Oh yeah." Jeremie said, grinning triumphantly. "Given what I know about materialization, it was easier than I expected. Anyway, it worked!"  
Jeremie dismounted, and so did Aelita, placing the overboard just off the ground, where it hovered placidly.  
"I also got these." Jeremie said. Inside were their weapons and three small metal circular objects.

"I'm sure you know what to do with these." He said, throwing Odd a pair of gloves, Ulrich a sword, complete with a sheath and a belt to carry it, and Yumi a pair of metal fans. Then he went around and fastened the small circular objects to their necks.  
"And those will give you your special abilities." He said with pride. "I even programmed them to give you the pixelization abilities Odd had, and there's no danger about them now. I've had enough time to perfect the process."

"Seriously?" Yumi said, astonished. She held up a hand, and all of Odd's stones raised into the air and hovered there. Then she threw them at the water, each of them skipping several times before sinking.  
"Hey!" Odd said.  
"Sorry, Odd. I can't help it if I'm better at skipping stones than you."  
"Hey, Yumi!" Ulrich called. "I ran the length of the bridge in 1.5 seconds! New record!"  
"Hey guys," Jeremie said impatiently. "May I remind you we have a world to save? The vehicles will let you catch up with Xana, and the rest will help you fight him. Call us as soon as its safe to deactivate the tower, okay?"  
"Right!" Odd said, flipping backwards onto the overboard.

"Good luck, guys." Jeremie said.  
"Thanks, Einstein." Odd replied. "So, a race, anyone?"  
"You didn't beat me last time." Ulrich said, getting on the overbike. Yumi was getting on the overwing. "You won't beat me this time, either." He said, with a grin.  
And with that, they took off.


	10. Chapter 9: Sky High

Chapter 9: Sky High 

Confusion was rapidly spreading throughout the Pentagon. No one could really figure out how four fully armed jet fighters had been beaten by four transport helicopters, and the pilots, once rescued, issued a preposterous report about force fields and a laser-firing robotic spider. No one was quite ready to believe them, but they also knew that one of the creatures recovered at the military base in France matched the pilots' description.

"Sir." Said a very weary radar watcher.  
"Yes?" Replied an equally weary officer.  
"We've got three more objects entering Washington airspace."  
"More helicopters?"  
"No, sir. I cannot identify them, although they appear to be very small. I can't contact them, so they must not have onboard radios, if they're even aircraft at all."

The officer's face went white. That could only mean one thing. Incoming missiles!  
"LAUNCH ANOTHER AIRCRAFT, NOW!"

The jet fighter screamed in from the south, on a direct intercept course with the missiles. The pilot armed the weapons, and drew up beside the targets. Only then did he get his first good look at them.

They were not missiles at all. Instead there were... he could hardly believe his eyes... Three _kids_, perhaps more like young teenagers, riding on a flying motorized unicycle, a flying mechanical surfboard, and another hovercraft that did not have any ground-bound technological parallel. He just stared at them dumbly.

The kid on the hover board, for that was the only thing it could be, a scrawny guy with blonde hair gelled up into a spike, waved at him. Before he knew what he was doing, he waved back. The kid smiled, and then said something to the others he couldn't hear through the glass of the cockpit. The pilots eyes, already opened wide, went even wider as the three of them instantly jumped from Mach 2 to Mach 5, leaving his plane in the dust.

"Commander..." The pilot said into the radio, "You are never going to believe this."

---------------------  
Here were the current standings: Ulrich in first place, Yumi in second, and Odd in third, each of them passing the time before they reached Xana's forces by trying to outmaneuver each other in the race Odd had suggested. Yumi hadshouted atOdd for deliberately attracting the jet fighter's attention, but he had argued that they already had to return to the past anyway, seeing that Xana's monsters were already making headline news.

At the altitude they were, it would be difficult for a normal human to breathe, let alone hang onto his or her vehicle at the speed they were going, but the pixelization Jeremie had encoded into the chips on their necks got them around such petty obstacles. They were also very pleasantly surprised that the vehicles were much faster in the real world than they were in Lyoko.

"Ok, guys." Ulrich said, as Odd darted around him and Yumi to take first place. "We need a plan. Any ideas?"  
"Don't we have to catch up with the helicopters first?" Yumi said.  
"We want to keep our distance. If they actually see us, then we're in big trouble. If they shoot our vehicles out from under us, its a very long way down." Ulrich said, then grimaced at the thought.

"Well," Yumi said, darting around Ulrich to take second place, "Xana obviously must know where he's sending his minions, so we just follow them to where the Sword is buried. When they land, then we can battle them on the ground, where it's safer."  
"Good idea." Odd said, as Ulrich darted around Yumi and Odd to take the lead once more.

Below them, clouds and the ground below them were zipping by at an alarming rate. They were trying not to look down.  
"But we want to make sure that we can take them on before they get the hands on the Sword." Ulrich said. "If the two alien artifacts are reunited, then we don't stand a chance."  
The two others nodded.

Far below, a farmer worked his fields. He never saw them, and they never saw him. But he had always had a sort of sixth sense about when things were flying overhead. His instincts told him to look up, but he saw nothing but blue sky.  
"Good luck." He murmured. He didn't know if he was speaking to a bird, a plane, a plastic bag blown on the wind, or even a UFO, but something told him to wish it luck anyway.  
"Go get 'em."

----------------------  
Mr. Della Robia wiped sweat from his brow. If it had been hot in France, it was definitely much, much hotter here in the Nevada Desert.  
He was here because a lost truck driving in this isolated sea of sand just happened to have a radar on board, and it had picked up a curious subterranean chamber. The driver reported it when he found his way back, and now he and his team had been here for five hours after receiving the call.

They had mainly been spent setting up camp, pitching tents and setting up equipment and the like, for it looked like they would be here a few days. Also, he had to explain some of the finer points of archeology to the team's newest member, a woman named Lexina, who he had hired to replace Hector after he sold the Grail to the military.

"Sir!" The call came out. It came from the dig site.  
"Yes?" Mr. Della Robia said, coming over.  
"We found something! You're not going to believe it! Take a look!" Said an enthusiastic archeologist.  
Odd's dad entered the pit, to take a look at what they discovered, stopped, and stared. It was a flat stone, and he recognized the exact same warnings that had been placed on the covering stone for the Grail's chamber in France.

He could hardly believe his luck. Here he was, a single man with his team, to not only have discovered one, but two alien artifact chambers. He and the other archeologist in the pit heaved the stone out of the way, revealing a dark, square opening. He had lost the Grail, but he was filled with elation for he might have just uncovered the Sword.

He had good cause to be jubilant. But he was nowhere near as lucky as he thought.  
"Hey, does anyone else hear helicopters?" He said, looking around.


	11. Chapter 10: The Sword and the Grail

Chapter 10: The Sword and the Grail 

The five archeologists, including Odd's dad, turned to see the four military helicopters touching down. Their first thought was that the government had arrived to take the Sword as well, but that notion quickly died when the helicopters' back doors opened and Xana's monsters poured out along with the possessed soldiers.

They had seen them before, of course. By now, everyone had seen the footage of the creatures that had marched through Murphy's Creek and attacked the French Military base. That didn't stop them from wanting to flee, badly.

"RUN!" Odd's dad shouted, and they ran off, not caring that they would be fleeing into the desert, which would almost certainly kill them if Xana's monsters did not. They never got the chance. The soldiers, pixilated by Xana, were much too fast for them, and they ran around to cut off their escape route. Before the team knew it, they were completely surrounded.

Dantam stepped through the crowd, eyes flashing with Xana's symbol. He grinned malevolently at Odd's dad.  
"General Dantam?" Odd's dad said incredulously.  
"No, human." Dantam sneered. "I am called Xana, and I am the future ruler of this planet. The General is but my puppet now."  
"What do you want from us, alien?" Lexina growled, assuming that an alien had somehow possessed him, for that was the only explanation.

"Simple. I have the Grail. Now, I will get the Sword, since you have kindly uncovered the entrance to the chamber. Once the artifacts are reunited, ultimate power will be mine. There is nothing you can do about it." Xana said, looking Lexina square in the eye.  
He turned to Odd's dad.  
"I can see who you are. You are the father of one of my enemies. I will have the pleasure of seeing your face when your son dies." He said.  
"Odd? NO! What does he have to do with this? Don't you dare lay a hand on him!" Mr. Della Robia shouted, his face going white.

Xana just laughed.  
"Tie them up." Several soldiers rushed to comply. "You." He said, pointing to two soldiers, a Blok, and three Kankrelats. " Accompany me into the chamber." Xana, in Dantam's body, descended into the black opening, along with his chosen minions.

------------------  
"There they are." Ulrich said, pointing to the ground. With their enhanced eyes, they could easily see the four helicopters parked on the sand below. They also saw the encampment, along with several figures disappearing into the ground.  
"That's weird." Yumi said. "Why would Xana bother to set up a camp?"

They landed behind a rocky outcropping, perfect for spying on the figures standing around the campground. Some of them were human. Some of them were obviously not.  
"Okay." Yumi said. "I've got a plan. Xana sent some people into the chamber to retrieve the Sword. If you two can provide a distraction, I can get in."  
"Are you sure about this, Yumi?" Ulrich asked.  
"Positive. Odd, can you call Jeremie and tell him its safe to try and deactivate the tower now?"

"Right." Odd said, throwing a mock salute. He pulled out his cell phone, quickly dialed a number, spoke briefly with the person on the other end, then hung up.  
"Let's go."

Odd and Ulrich, screaming out into the open on their vehicles, mowed down twenty monsters between them in their surprise attack before the enemies could react. But when they did react, the response was fierce. Lasers from the monsters flew from all directions, and the two of them dodged nimbly. The soldiers also fired bullets at them, but the slower projectiles couldn't hit them either.

Odd ran straight at a cluster of three Krabes, firing arrows. One of the lasers seared a hole straight through his hair, meaning to hit his head, but Odd was luckier in his shots. The Krabes bit the dust. Only then did Odd see what they had been guarding.  
"What the... DAD?" Odd exclaimed.  
"Odd! What the heck do you think you're doing here?" Odd's astonished dad exclaimed back.  
"Um, saving the world from a brutal end at the hands of a demonic supercomputer?" Odd said sheepishly, with a small shrug.

"Look, I don't have time to explain right now." Odd said, untying his dad and the other archeologists. "I would like to know how in the world you got to the Sword before both us AND Xana, but I don't have time for that either."  
Odd finished untying them, then launched back into the fray.  
"Wish me luck!"

---------------------  
Yumi crept down the passageway. Just as they had planned, she had been able to sneak by unnoticed with her friend's distractions. She peered into the main chamber, which was nearly identical to the Grail's chamber, except for the artifact inside, and the fact that it seemed to be surrounded by a cube of light that gave off enough of a glow for her to see Xana and the two soldiers. But where were the Blok and the Kankrelats?

"Accursed Zethians!" She heard Xana exclaim. "How could the security system for the Grail have failed, yet be up and running for the Sword?"  
Yumi glimpsed the wreckage of the monsters. That answered her question. The alien security system must have destroyed them before Xana could short circuit it.

Xana stared at the cube of light. He punched it, feeling it repel his hand with Dantam's nerves. He looked down, frustrated, then saw a strange depression in the table the Sword was sitting on. Xana stared at it for a moment, then took the Grail out from his pack and fit it into the depression. It fit perfectly, and the cube of light vanished, plunging them into darkness. The room was lit up again a moment later by the soldiers, who had electricity pulsing around their hands.

"Ingenious." Xana murmured. "I'll bet there was a keyhole shaped like the Sword in the Grail's chamber that the archeologists didn't notice. The two of them unlock each other, and with both locked away, there is no way for either to be used as the key for the other." He didn't notice that he was talking to himself.  
"No matter." He said, taking the Sword. He held up the Grail, and neatly pressed the Sword into the Grail's slot.

The thing crackled to life, glowing and pulsing with energy. The red and blue stones around the rims lit up, and both ends opened up, so that the Grail now looked more like a two-ended cup than an hourglass. Xana smiled evilly, reveling in what he was sure was his greatest triumph.

He wasn't counting on the two fans that flew out of the dark corridor, slicing through the necks of the two soldiers. Their pixilated flesh couldn't bleed, and the nanobots coursing through their veins were already fixing the flesh back into place, but they fell to the floor, writhing in pain anyway.  
Yumi vaulted into the open, snatching the Grail from the hand of a very surprised Xana, and slid against the back wall. Standing up, she aimed the red end at Xana.

"Don't move." She said, a deadly edge to her voice.  
"Why, Yumi." Xana said, unconcerned that the Grail could probably vaporize the body he was in. "Are you really daring to challenge me, young lady?"  
"I don't know what the Grail does, exactly," Yumi said. "But you know, and I'm willing to find out."

Yumi drew her attention to the buttons on the hilt of the Sword. She decided that they must be the things that controlled the Grail, but she began to feel herself drown in horror when she realized that she hadn't the faintest idea how to work it. The buttons were marked with Zethian words, and she didn't have access to the archeologists' translating program. Throwing trust in her luck, she pressed several buttons at random.

The Grail fired. But not the red end. With the red end, the one that was supposed to bring death, pointed at Xana, the blue end was pointed at herself, and white energy flowed out of it, into her body. Yumi gave a short scream, then fell to the ground, energy coursing through her body. Xana stood over her.  
"Pity." He said. "The blue end brings life, and you already have it. So it looks like it backfired."

He slung Yumi over his shoulder, then proceeded to walk out of the chamber. He didn't notice the faint blue aura that now surrounded her.


	12. Chapter 11: Life Anew

Chapter 11: Life Anew 

"Alright Jeremie." Aelita said, hanging up. She was standing in front of a scanner in the Factory. "I just received the call from Odd. I must go now."  
"Okay then. Good luck." Jeremie said over the intercom. "Be safe."

Aelita stepped in, and a minute later, she was falling to the ground of the Desert Region.  
"Aelita, your escort is to the north. Once you reach them, you can proceed to the tower." Jeremie said.  
Aelita took off running. She knew Jeremie couldn't materialize a vehicle for her; they were already in the real world. And she needed to stretch her legs anyway.

"I see them, Jeremie!" Aelita called.  
Five Krabes and a Tarantula stood at attention on the small plateau ahead of her. They were glowing a faint green, just like the Franz-controlled Mantas had glowed white. They turned to look at her as she approached, but didn't attack. One Krabe bent down and offered her its back. She climbed on, grateful that the "high camel", as Odd once put it, was better than no transportation at all.

"It worked, Jeremie. The monsters are not showing any signs of hostility."  
"Good. I've also got some Frelions coming in from the east to provide covering fire once you get to the tower. Hopefully they'll be of some help."  
"They'd better be, Jeremie." Aelita said. The welcoming committee looks a little hairy today."

She could already see the tower, and the monsters guarding it. Xana knew his monsters well, and also knew they weren't capable of the complicated maneuvers of the humans that allowed them to tackle numbers much larger than their own. Therefore, he was certain that simply outnumbering Jeremie's monsters would do the trick. Three Tarantulas and fifteen Krabes guarded the tower, triple Jeremie's numbers.

Jeremie's monsters didn't bother with a surprise attack. They rushed toward Xana's monsters, lasers blazing, and Lyoko's first exclusively laser firefight broke out.  
Aelita jumped off the Krabe that was carrying her just before it was smashed to pieces.  
"Jeremie, are the Frelions here yet?" Aelita asked. "Hold on... wait... ok, they're here."

Fifteen Frelions soared down from the skies, lasers firing from their stingers. Five of Xana's Krabes blew apart under their fire, and then they flew around the tower before launching another volley. One of Xana's Tarantulas started firing up at the Frelions, and three of them were hit, sending them crashing to the ground.  
"It seems to be going well, Jeremie." Aelita said. The Frelions had obviously turned the battle in their favor. "I just hope Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich are holding out as well as we are."

------------------  
Ulrich blocked yet another laser with his sword, deflecting it right back into the Blok that had fired it. He ducked as a ball of electricity came flying over his head, fired by one of the pixilated soldiers. He glanced over at Odd, who was standing on one of the tables the archeologists had set up, firing down on those around him. In one area, the archeologists themselves were just managing to hold their own, defending themselves fearfully with pickaxes. Odd's dad seemed the most aggressive, and Ulrich thought that maybe he was a little jealous of his own son's skill.

"STOP!" Came a loud voice. It was loud enough for everyone to obey and turn to see who had shouted it. The fighting came to an abrupt end.

It was Xana who had shouted.  
"Stop, all of you. I have the Grail, and the Sword, now. We must leave." He said.  
"Oh yeah?" Ulrich said, angrily. "Well, we're not letting you go anywhere, Xana!"  
"Really? I think I have something that will convince you to change your minds."

Xana snapped. The soldiers he had brought into the chamber, which had recovered by now, and to which he had given Yumi, came forward and threw her on the ground. One of the soldiers put an assault rifle to her chest, and Ulrich and Odd gasped in horror.  
"YUMI!" Ulrich shouted. "Xana! Don't you dare hurt her!"  
"You're in no position to be giving me orders, Ulrich." Xana sneered. "I have all the cards now, both the alien weapon and your freind. You cannot save your precious world now. And your failure is about to become my greatest success."

Xana held up the Grail.  
"Do you know why I have always wanted to take over your world, humans? It is because I thought that ruling you humans would somehow make up for what you have and I don't. I am a computer program, not a creature of flesh and blood, and thus, I do not truly live. I have always been jealous of the life you have and I don't, which is why I try to take it away from you."

Understanding began to dawn on Odd and Ulrich. Meanwhile, Yumi was beginning to wake up, and could sense that the device that provided her pixelization was gone. She saw it in the hand of one of the soldiers guarding her.  
"But that is about to change!" Xana shouted, nearly in a frenzy now. "Watch the power of the Grail, humans!"

Xana pressed some buttons on the Sword, and the Grail glowed to life. The ends opened, and Xana stuck Dantam's hand inside the blue end. Immediately, energy started coursing through Dantam's body. He convulsed and writhed, and then a specter emerged from his body, settling inside the blue end. Electricity pulsed everywhere, and then the specter emerged from the Grail.

It settled on the ground, and then began to form upwards and solidify. Two legs appeared, then a body, and finally the head and arms.

Xana's new body was not just a host, like Dantam's. It was truly his. He was dressed in black from head to toe, mainly in Black robes, pants, and a vest. His symbol was imprinted in red on the front of his outfit. He carried a long, silver staff in one hand, which ended in a glowing glass sphere. He was also wearing a large helmet, with a shaded visor that obscured his eyes. Part of the helmet was clear, showing all sorts of complicated circuitry inside.

"Muahahahahaha!" Xana laughed evilly. "It feels good to be alive."  
He kicked General Dantam, who was unconscious, out of the way, and strutted over to Yumi.  
"Do you know the feeling, Yumi?" Xana asked, bending over her. "Do you ever feel good just because you're alive?"  
Yumi, not sure what else to do, could only nod, anger and fear mixing on her face.  
"Good." Xana said. He stood up straight and faced the soldier which had the gun aimed at her.

"Kill her." He ordered.


	13. Chapter 12: Second Warning

Chapter 12: Second Warning 

_Bang_.  
_Bang._

_Bang._

Ulrich cringed. With every bullet the soldier fired, Ulrich felt as though it was his own heart being fired into.

He felt tears coming to his eyes. Yumi lay on the sand, blood leaking out of the three holes in her chest. Those three moments felt like the longest in Ulrich's life. The soldier stood over her, an impassive expression on his face. Xana's was like a man who had just partaken in revenge, which he had.

"Well, that's that." Xana said. "It is time to go, minions." He said, turning to the remaining monsters and the possessed soldiers. "I have the ultimate weapon now, but this desert is short on targets. We must go back to France right away."

"What about the other humans here, Lord Xana?" One of the soldiers asked. Ulrich badly wanted to rush forward and throttle Xana, but he also knew that doing so would be an invitation for all of Xana's minions to start shooting at once, and the ones now standing over him and Odd wouldn't let them get away easily.

"Destroy the vehicles that brought them here. We'll see how long they'll last here in the desert. Water is a necessity among living creatures, I hear, and I doubt those archeologists brought enough to last all of them through a trek back to civilization." Xana said, with a dismissive wave. "And with Yumi dead, I'm sure they won't be able to fight us even if they do escape."

"But Lord Xana," one of the soldiers said, with a confused expression on his face, "If Yumi is dead, then why is she still moving?"

-------------------  
Two Krabes, one glowing green, the other not glowing at all, rushed forward and butted heads, sending the glowing one sprawling. Aelita was worried. Although the Frelions had been able to pick off a lot of Xana's Krabes when they first swooped in, the Tarantulas had been better at shooting down flying targets than she thought they would be. One or two were still firing down, but all three Tarantulas were still firing upwards.

Jeremie's Krabes had formed into a little defensive cluster, but they were surrounded by Xana's Krabes. There was an explosion, and the lasers firing outward decreased. The battle had been going well at first, now they were obviously losing. She heard a rumbling sound, and turned to see two of Xana's Megatanks rolling into position. One fired, and the laser blew Jeremie's Tarantula apart.

"Aelita, can you do anything?" Jeremie's frantic voice called out. "My monsters can't hold Xana's monsters off much longer!"  
"I'll... I'll try, Jeremie." Aelita said softly, clearly sounding like she wasn't sure she could help.  
She knelt to the ground, closed her eyes, and started to sing. The high, clear note resonated around Lyoko.

She opened her eyes, unsure if what she had tried had worked. It had.

The three Krabes which were left had grown to a tremendous size, empowered by the sound of Aelita's voice. Jeremie stared at his screen, which now held three giant green circles, surrounded by about ten smaller red circles. The character cards for the Krabes now showed that they had no less than 40,000 HP, and an laser attack of 400 life points per hit.

"Aelita..." Jeremie said, "Um, have you always been able to do that?"  
"Uh, theoretically, it should have been possible." Aelita's voice came through the speakers, "But believe me, I'm just as surprised as you are."

The first of the super-sized Krabes raised a claw into the air, and brought it down with devastating force. The shockwave sent the five Krabes nearest it flying up into the air, where the Krabe shot lasers as big as they were right into them. The second Krabe swept a giant claw along the ground, sweeping the rest of Xana's Krabes right off the edge into the digital sea.

Two elliptical blasts hit the third one, but even the Megatank's massive firepower didn't seem to faze the Krabe. The Megatanks closed their shields but the Krabe fired two laser blasts anyway. Each of the two blasts vaporized one of the Megatanks, armor and all. Meanwhile, the three Tarantulas were making a run for it, but a few lucky shots from the still-normal Frelions destroyed them.

With all of Xana's monsters gone, there was silence on the plateau. The three Krabes started shrinking down to normal size, and the two Frelions remaining swept down. The monsters bowed to Aelita, and then flew and walked off. Aelita watched them go.  
"Thanks!" She shouted, waving after them.  
"Alright, Aelita. Its up to you now."

---------------------  
Xana whirled around and saw that Yumi was indeed moving. She sat up, and looked around, first at Ulrich and Odd, then at Xana, then at her own chest. She reached down and, wincing with pain, pulled the bullets one by one out of her flesh. Then, before everyone's eyes, the wounds started to shrink, and the flesh began to heal. In moments, it was as if Yumi had never been shot at all.

"What... But... How...?" One of the archeologists said, in wonder. Xana looked at her, and noticed for the first time the blue aura shining around her.  
"The Grail." Xana spat. "It looks like it affected her after all. Its power was still in her body when she was shot, and it healed her." He walked over to her. "You are a very lucky girl, you know that. I didn't notice it before, but when you fired the blue end at yourself, you absorbed its energy."

" As long as that blue aura is around you," Xana continued. He was obviously furious, and it looked like he was talking to himself more than Yumi. "Nothing can kill you. And there's no telling how long it will last."  
"Then you haven't won yet, Xana." Yumi said.  
"Don't let invulnerability go to your head, young lady! I can still kill your friends!" He screamed, whirling on her.

He turned to the monsters and soldiers surrounding Ulrich and Odd.  
"DESTROY THEM!" He shouted. But nothing happened. For at that very moment, Aelita was in the tower, watching data flow down the inner walls into oblivion. The symbols in the soldiers' eyes disappeared, and they flopped to the ground, unconscious, as specters flew out of their bodies and dissipated. The monsters eyes dimmed, and they also clattered to the ground.

For a moment, the archeologists, the kids, and Xana just stood there, stunned. Odd broke out into cheers.  
"Yeah! Take that Xana!" Odd shouted. "No worries now, guys, it looks like Aelita did it!"  
"We've foiled you once again, Xana." Ulrich said. Unlike Odd, his face was still serious. He drew his sword. "And I can't wait to give you a little taste of this after what you did to Yumi."

Xana backed up, only to run into Yumi. She had grabbed the pixelization chip from the fallen soldier and placed it back on her neck, and when Xana backed up into her, she put her twin fans to his neck. He turned and pushed her away, then backed up in the other direction. But Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi were closing in and surrounding him, weapons drawn.

"You think you've won?" Xana snarled. "As long as any trace of my consciousness remains on Earth, the return to the past cannot be activated." The three kids stopped at that. They hadn't known that.

"Oh yes!" Xana said. "Normally it doesn't matter, because deactivating the tower removes me from Earth, flinging me back into cyberspace. But I'm still here in my new body, and I'm not about to lose it to you! Did you forget this little thing?"  
Xana held up the Grail, and the kids took a step back.  
"I am not afraid to use this against you!" He shouted.

"Um, Xana, or whatever your name is," Lexina said, "Based on our latest translations of the alien writing, I don't-"  
"SILENCE!" Xana shouted, turning around so that the red end of the Grail was aimed at the archeologists. But since he was aiming at the archeologists, it meant that he was not aiming at the kids, and they took that opportunity to tackle him to the ground. The Grail rolled out of his hand, toward Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich's vehicles. Xana threw the kids off, ran forward, and grabbed the Grail.

He put the Grail into a pocket in the folds of his robes, then fired a blast of energy from his staff toward the kids. Ulrich knocked it aside with his sword, but the distraction was enough to give Xana time to hop on the overwing. He raised the vehicle into the air, firing blasts down.  
"Hey!" Yumi shouted, as she blocked a blast with her fan. "That's mine!"  
"Not anymore!" Xana shouted. "See you later, fools! I've got a world to destroy!"

With that, Xana flew off. "We have to go after him!" Odd shouted.  
"Listen." Yumi said, turning to Odd's dad and the rest of the archeologists. She noticed that the blue glow around her body was fading. "Will you be able to get help for yourself and these soldiers?" she said.  
"Yes, I have a cell-" Mr. Della Robia started.  
"Okay, good." Ulrich said. "Yumi, you can share the overbike with me. Lets go."

"Wait!" Odd's dad shouted. His voice quieted, then he continued. "Odd, listen. You and your friends must not let Xana use the Grail as a weapon. The world is in more danger than you realize from that artifact. Its not just its firepower that's dangerous!"  
"What do you mean?" Odd said, going over to his dad.  
"We translated the second part of Canto's warning. You haven't seen it yet. Look."  
He handed a piece of paper to Odd. The three kids read it, and, like when they read the first part of the message what seemed like an eternity ago, they felt chills go down their spines.

THE GRAIL IS SOUGHT BY THE YAKANOMERE

ACTIVATION OF RED WILL BRING THEM HERE

VALOR WON'T SAVE YOU FROM THE RINGS

THAT BRING DEATH TO ALL LIVING THINGS.


	14. Chapter 13: Don't Do It!

Chapter 13: Don't Do It! 

The overbike and the overboard screamed across the sky, heading east through the United States, while Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd worried about what Xana would do when he got back to France.

They also worried about the second part of Canto's warning.  
"So, tell me, who are these Yakanomere again?" Odd said. "I'm not sure I understood what they told us."  
"For the last time, Odd," Ulrich said, "Your dad and the others theorized that the Zethians Xana mentioned put the Grail on Earth to hide it from their enemies; and these Yakanomere must be them. We don't know exactly how they will know if the Grail is activated, but they will know somehow. That's why we have to stop Xana from using it at all costs, or we'll have an alien invasion on our hands!"  
"Oh. I see." Odd said, confusion vanishing into enthusiasm.  
"You'd better." Yumi said.

They flew in silence for a while, passing over Washington DC for a second time without a thought, and then were over the Atlantic.  
"Yumi..." Ulrich finally said, "Are you sure you're okay?"  
"Yes, Ulrich. Why?"  
"Well, I don't want to see you die... again."  
She laid a hand on his shoulder.  
"Don't worry. We'll get through this." She smiled. "But thanks for caring."  
Ulrich gave a warm smile back.

----------------------  
Jeremie pounded the keyboard in frustration. "I don't believe this!" He screamed.  
"Calm down, Jeremie." Aelita said from beside him. "I'm sure there must be an explanation."  
Jeremie groaned as a red exclamation mark reappeared on his screen, while the computer beeped incessantly.  
"I just keep getting the same error message. It says that the return to the past cannot be activated because the tower has not been deactivated. But there are no activated towers now!"  
"Look, the problem is in there somewhere. We just have to- Hey! What's that?"

Jeremie turned to see what Aelita was pointing at. It wasa screen showing what one of the factory's security cameras was seeing; to be specific, it was the one displaying the roof of the factory. Something was flying in from the west.  
"Its the overwing." Aelita said, as soon as it got close enough for them to see it clearly. "But who is that on it?"

The overwing landed on the roof of the factory, and the figure on it stepped off. As soon as he turned so that he was facing the hidden camera, both of them knew who they were looking at.  
"It can't be..." Aelita said.  
"Xana must have used the Grail to give himself a body." Jeremie theorized. "The jerk." He added.  
"But what happened to Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich?"

Jeremie quickly dialed Ulrich's cell phone with the computer.  
"Ulrich, are you there? Answer me!"  
"Hi Jeremie. Everything okay?" Ulrich's voice came back.  
"Listen, are you aware of what happened to Xana?"  
"Yeah."  
"He's on the factory roof right now. What do we do?"  
"He's at the factory? Okay. Don't move. Whatever you do, don't go near him. We'll see what we can do."  
"Okay. In the meantime, I'll see if I can fix the return to the past trip."  
"Don't bother. I can't explain how, but we'll need to get rid of Xana for it to work at all. Talk to you later."

------------------  
Xana looked around him, smiling to himself. The factory had a good view of the main part of the city in the distance.  
"So many humans, so little time." He said to himself. "Where should I start? Maybe I'll vaporize that boarding school they love so much. Or that house Ishiyama lives at. I believe her family should be at home right now, no doubt wondering where their daughter is. I wonder if I can take everything out at once?"

His cravings for destruction were interrupted by a humming sound, and turned around to see the overbike and the overboard landing on the roof. Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich got off, readying their weapons.  
"You three never give up, do you?" Xana said, cocking his head.  
"Listen, Xana." Yumi said. "I don't know if there is any sense of sanity in your head that I can appeal to, but you must not use the Grail. The Yakanomere can destroy everything; including you, and if you use it, they will come here."

"Fool. Do you really think I'm going to fall for that? You three have meddled in my plans long enough. I will destroy you now."  
Xana whipped out his staff, fast as lightning, and fired three bolts in succession. The kids jumped out of the way, and the bolts missed them, slamming into the wall of the structure that housed the roof access staircase. Yumi pulled out a fan and flung it at Xana, who knocked it aside with his staff, then fired a blue stream that froze her in place near the edge of the roof.

Yumi tried in vain to move her feet, and, seeing that she could not, threw her fans again. Xana blocked, then whirled around to block again as Ulrich swung his sword at him. Ulrich started to force him back, swinging his sword, trying to find a hole in Xana's defenses. Xana slammed the globe at the end of his staff into Ulrich's face, then flung him back. Ulrich skidded to a spot near Yumi, then got up.

Xana stared at them for about half a second before he felt a sharp pain in his back. He turned around to see Odd, who waved at him before firing a rapid-fire stream of arrows, and Xana couldn't move fast enough to block them all. Three hit him in the chest, and he doubled over in pain.  
"That's for what you did to Yumi!" Odd called.

Xana's reply was simple. He fired a giant ball of electricity at Odd. Odd got caught in it, and let out a wavering cry as he was electrocuted. He fell to the ground, smoking slightly.  
"Ow." He said.  
Xana smiled evilly for a second before realizing Ulrich was charging at him, renewing his attack. Xana parried the blows with his staff, only to feel a pair of fans smash into the back of his helmet, which started buzzing with released electricity.

Xana fired at her, but even though her feet were frozen to the floor, she was able to duck. He aimed lower, but the blast was deflected by Ulrich, who had ran in front to defend her. The deflected blast ricocheted off a metal banister, then hit Xana in the side.  
"Ha!" Ulrich shouted triumphantly.

Xana was furious by now. He was getting the feeling that he was severely outmatched here.  
"Enough!" Xana said, holding up a hand. "I surrender." He dropped his staff.  
Yumi and Ulrich made eye contact, and both of them saw the skepticism they shared.  
"You're kidding, right?" Yumi said.  
"But of course." Xana said, whipping out the Grail.

"Uh oh." Ulrich said.  
"Uh oh is right, Ulrich." Xana said, a big grin on his face. "I am well aware of the Grail's power. It will burn through your puny sword like tissue paper." He aimed the red end at them.  
"Plus, I know how to use it, unlike Yumi."  
"Don't do it Xana! The Yakanomere!" Yumi shouted desperately.  
"I won't let you hurt her." Ulrich said. "Not again." He moved to shield Yumi with his body, and held up his sword to block.

"You are a naive fool, Ulrich!" Xana screamed. "This thing will go right through both of you and still destroy the entire city! Do you really think you can stop me now! DIE!"  
He pressed several buttons, and aimed.  
He didn't see Odd rushing from the side. He pushed Xana to the side, both of them falling to the ground, just as the Grail fired.

The deadly red beam of light missed Ulrich and Yumi by less than two centimeters. It flew off into the distance, passing between two of the tallest buildings in the city, heading north.

It landed in the English Channel, far away from any boats or either shoreline.

Then, it detonated.

It was as if half the nuclear weapons on Earth had gone off at once. A gigantic cloud of superheated steam rose miles into the air, and the flash of light would have fried the eyeballs of anyone who looked at it. When the initial explosion died down, there was a soft rumbling, and a sphere of exotic energy slowly grew. It was slightly pink, and crackled with blue electricity. It reached ten miles in diameter before slowly dissipating. The whole thing could be seen as far away as Iceland.

For the first time on Earth, not a single human moved a muscle in Europe. No one could do anything except stare in horror at the far away explosion. Even from where they were, Yumi, Ulrich, Odd, and Xana could see that it was tremendous.

A light wind blew from the direction of the explosion. It had originally been stronger than a hurricane wind, but it had died down by the time it reached them. For one, terrible moment, there was stunned silence.

Then, panic erupted.

And in the calm of space, a pulse of strange energy, one that had originated at the point of detonation and spread outward in all directions, flew through the endless vastness, faster than light. It didn't take long for something to pick it up.


	15. Chapter 14: Deadly Rings

Chapter 14: Deadly Rings 

Pluto, as the ninth planet from the sun, is a very, very remote place, and cold, too. So cold, as a matter of fact, that most gasses from our planet would freeze instantly if they were there. It is easy to imagine that absolutely nothing could survive there.

Nothing, that is, except a Yakanomere.

The Yakanomere are one of the hardiest species in the universe, equally at home in Pluto's frigid wastelands as they would be on their home planet, which is the second planet from their star and very, very, hot. Pluto holds just one of their many distant outposts, established about 1,000 years ago when the Yakanomere first came to this part of the galaxy. Such outposts are used for relaying information, defending the edges of the Yakanomere Empire, and in some cases, monitoring nearby planets with sentient life forms.

They had been monitoring Earth for some time now, and many finely tuned instruments were always pointed at the blue-green planet, picking up all sorts of signals, and these same instruments were what picked up the Grail's pulse. The Yakanomere watching the instruments scratched the tentacles on his head with one of his four arms, puzzled. He turned on an intercom and started speaking into it.  
"Commander." He said into it, in his species' language. "I've detected some hyperspace transmissions coming from Earth."

"Hyperspace transmissions?" The commander said through the intercom, "The humans do not have that kind of technology."  
"I know. That's what concerns me."  
"Stay right there, trooper. I'll be right down."

10 seconds later, Commander Ekaia walked in. He was small for a Yakanomere, but he always bristled with self confidence, occasionally, curiosity, and a mean streak that would send a hardened gangster running for his life. He strode over to the console on clawed feet and looked down at the readings.  
"Curious." He said, stroking his snout. He looked at the readings for a second more, then all six of his blue eyes widened.  
"I recognize those signals!" He shouted.

The trooper looked down at the readings, then recognized them too.  
"The Grail? But that's impossible! I thought it was just a legend!"  
"Apparently not. Those are its signals, all right. Imagine that. It has existed right under our noses for the last millennium, if not much, much longer."  
He straightened up.  
"Come trooper. We are going to retake the Grail for the Yakanomere Empire today. Head to the ship. I will rally the men."

---------------------  
Its official classification was a Battle Coil. It had many nicknames, though. "The world crusher." or "The exterminator." were two of them. The spaceship was aptly named though. It had a minimum crew of 500, a maximum crew of over 500,000, thousands of smaller warships, particle cannons, anti-matter missiles, laser beams, tractor beams, gravitonic warheads and bombs, the works. It could easily vaporize an unprotected planet.

It was shaped, (surprise, surprise.) like a coil. The material it was made of was built to withstand hundreds of attacks at once, and could stretch, making the entire ship look like a gigantic black spring. Coiled up, it was the size of China. Uncoiled, it could reach all the way around a world. Its coils could even separate from one another and form into individual ships shaped like giant black rings.

It would be a strange sight to anyone who saw the launch happen from space. They would see a gigantic coil emerge from a hangar on Pluto, like a spring coming out of a hole in a soccer ball. It flew into space, heading for Earth at speeds terrestrial spacecraft could not hope to match in 12,000 years.

"How long will it take to get to Earth, trooper?" Commander Ekaia asked.  
"Estimated time of arrival is 3 minutes."  
"Good. When we get there, we'll take the Grail, have some fun, then get out."  
"Have some fun?" The trooper repeated, confused.  
"I've been stuck on that outpost for far too long, trooper. I'm itching for something to shoot at."  
"Sir, these life forms are innocent. They have done-"  
"Trooper?"  
"Yes sir?"  
"Shut up."  
"Yes sir."

And so several hundred miles of metallic, world-crushing fury headed through the void of space. Those on board prepared for battle, polishing cannons that had not been used in ages, loading in ammunition, checking generators to make sure they worked, and many other things.

Commander Ekaia smiled to himself. His mouth was filled with hundreds of needle-like red teeth. He was amusing himself with thoughts of the coming encounter. If he needed any more justification than the Grail for what he did to Earth, he could always say that they were far more advanced than previously thought, and had put up a hard defense. His superiors would never know that the world he had invaded never stood a chance.


	16. Chapter 15: Broken

Chapter 15: Broken 

_Ring_.

Aelita tentatively answered her cell phone. She was still shaking from seeing the explosion over the factory's security cameras.  
"Hello?"  
"Aelita? Its Robert, you know, Odd's dad? Listen. Please, please don't tell me that explosion I saw was caused by the Grail."  
"I'm sorry, Mr. Della Robia. It was the Grail."

Aelita heard a sigh come from the other end.  
"Then we are all doomed. They are coming for us now."  
"Who?"  
"The aliens."  
Aelita went as white as a sheet. "Jeremie," Aelita said, turning to him, "Odd's dad says that aliens are coming. What do we do?"  
"I know what we have to do." Jeremie said. "I figured out the problem with the return to the past function. But before we can use it, Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich have to defeat Xana."  
Aelita nodded slowly. That sounded far simpler than it actually was.

--------------------  
For a moment, Yumi, Ulrich, Odd, and Xana just stared at the explosion. Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich looked horrified. Xana looked like he would very much like to do it again.

A bird chirped. Instantly the trance was broken.  
"GET OFF ME!" Xana shouted, pushing Odd off. He picked him up and flung him into the wall, then picked up the Grail and started pressing the buttons on it again. The ice having melted, Ulrich and Yumi lunged at Xana, grabbing the Grail. For a few seconds, three pairs of hands were all tugging on the golden cup in different directions.

"You're not doing that again!" Yumi shouted at Xana.  
"And why shouldn't I?" Xana said, mockingly. He kicked Yumi and Ulrich's legs out from under them, forcing them to let go of the Grail, but as he did so, Ulrich kicked Xana as well, sending him sprawling. He let go of the Grail, and it flew into the air.

Four pairs of eyes and one security camera watched the Grail fly. It reached a peak, then fell downward. Over the edge of the roof. Yumi, Ulrich, Xana, and Odd scrambled over to the railing and saw it fall.

It hit the pavement.

And broke into a thousand pieces.

"Oops." Ulrich said.  
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Xana screamed.

---------------------------  
The Battle Coil passed Mars without a glance at it. Ahead was a little blue point of light among all the white ones- the planet Earth. The ship's enormous speed allowed the Yakanomere on board to see the point of light to grow into a full sphere, partly shrouded in night. They passed the Moon with only a cursory inspection, and found nothing of interest on it.

The blue planet was ahead of them now. The spring started to break up, and the individual coils formed into gigantic black rings, each about the size of France or Spain. The rings descended, dropping into the Earth's atmosphere, fanning out, while Commander Ekaia grinned with glee on board.  
"Prepare for the attack." He said, and the Yakanomere rushed to obey.

---------------------  
"You... YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!" Xana shouted, turning to the kids. Before they could reply, Xana whipped out his staff again and started firing again.  
Yumi ducked, Ulrich rolled out of the way, and Odd jumped straight up, firing arrows. Xana blocked them, then fired another blast.

Yumi took out a fan and threw it. Xana caught it and threw it back, but Yumi caught it. Then she threw it again and Xana caught it. For a little while it looked simply as if they were playing Frisbee, but they knew better. Ulrich rushed at Xana from the side, but Xana raised a hand, and an invisible force pushed Ulrich back, and he fell in a heap.

"Ulrich!" Odd called. "Incoming baseballs!"  
"Huh?" Ulrich said, confused, just as Odd fired a stream of arrows at him. Ulrich whipped out his sword and deflected them. Right into Xana's back. Xana staggered, and the deadly throwing cycle was broken. The fan hit Xana, and he fell backwards, lying flat on his back in the middle of the roof. He tried to get up, but discovered that he simply did not have the energy.

Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi closed in on him. They were standing over him, when they saw Xana's eyes widen with terror, staring not at them, but beyond them. They looked up to see what he was looking at, and also were transfixed by horror.

There was a strong wind blowing, as thousands of tons of displaced air rushed in all directions. A gigantic black band of metal was descending, black and curving. They could see where it curved in on itself, knowing that it would eventually curve all the way around and meet up with itself.  
"A deadly ring..." Yumi murmured.

Screams of terror were coming from everywhere, as gigantic black rings settled over every city in every country. "This is not good." Yumi said. They turned back to Xana.  
"Any last words, Xana?" Ulrich asked, drawing his katana.  
"There is only one way to truly kill me, humans, and you have not found it. Destroying this body of flesh and blood will only send me back to cyberspace."  
They looked at each other, then nodded.  
"It's good enough for now." Yumi said.

Ulrich swung his sword.

---------------------  
"Sir." One of the Yakanomere troopers said.  
"Yes?" Ekaia said in reply.  
"It is as you command. The humans are totally defenseless. We can attack at any time now."  
"Then do so."

The featureless black rings were suddenly dotted with thousands of points of bright light, as thousands upon thousands of powerful lasers lit up, ready to rain destruction upon human civilization.

And that was when bright, white light emerged from an insignificant-looking abandoned factory, and everything was swallowed up.


	17. Epilogue: Adding to the Message

Last Chapter. I've enjoyed writing this story, and I hope you all've enjoyed reading it, sothanks to everyone who reviewed.

Epilogue: Adding to the Message

It was a night darker than most, with no trace of a moon. Four figures ran swiftly through the black woods. They stopped near the backyard of a house, and waited.

At the prearranged time, one more figure stole out of the back door of the house. She signaled to her friends, and they came out of the woods to meet in the center of her backyard.

"Here." Yumi whispered, handing each of her friends a shovel. "You know what we have to do."  
Jeremie had decided that a return trip of two days would be needed to firmly erase all memories of aliens and monsters. They had had a long talk about the Grail, and they had all agreed what must be done. It was far to dangerous to be allowed to exist.

Five shovels dug into the ground, their work lit by the light of a single flashlight- ironically, the same one Yumi used when she and her mom first discovered the underground chamber. Yumi's parents and neighbors slept soundly, with no reason to suspect that anyone was doing anything suspicious in their neighborhood.

It wasn't long before metal struck stone. They uncovered the large, flat stone that concealed the hidden chamber, moved it aside, and descended.

The Grail sat placidly on its little stone table. The security system lay, defunct, in one corner. The message was still on the wall. Everything was as it should be, and the Grail showed no sign of damage from what happened to it in the previous timeline.

Ulrich put the security system and the Grail in a bag, then looked up to see what Yumi was doing. She was using a small chisel to carve something on the wall, below Canto's message.  
"Yumi, what are you doing?" Odd whispered urgently. "we have to get out of here before anyone sees us!"  
"Someday, Odd, someone may discover this place again. And when they do, I want them to know what happened."

She finished quickly, then they all hustled out of the chamber. They lifted the stone off the ground, then placed it carefully over the entrance. Then they reburied it. "Good job, guys." Jeremie said. "We'll see you tomorrow, Yumi. We'll take care of this."  
"Okay, then, goodnight." She said, waving, as Odd, Ulrich, Jeremie, and Aelita ran back into the woods.

Yumi took the shovels and the chisel and placed them back in the garage. Then she placed the flashlight on the nightstand where she left it, and went to bed. In the morning, she and her mom would start on a garden in the back yard, and they wouldn't find any groundbreaking archeological discoveries this time. She would make sure of that.

A mile away, four figures stole into an abandoned factory. They rode an elevator down one level, where one of the figures got off. Then the elevator rode down another level, and the rest of them got off. Jeremie typed quickly and efficiently, while Odd got into a scanner and Ulrich and Aelita loaded the alien artifacts into another scanner.

In the forest region of Lyoko, Odd appeared and solidified in midair. He plopped to the ground, and the bag with the Grail fell next to him. Odd picked up the bag, walked to the edge, and hurled it as far as he could.  
"Bye bye, you little mechanical death monger." Odd said, waving at it, as it fell into the digital sea and disappeared in a flash of light. "I hope we don't ever see you again!"

His task done, Jeremie devirtualized Odd, and the four of them headed back to school. Tomorrow was a weekend, and in the morning, they would surprise Yumi and her mom by showing up to help with the garden. They smiled a little at the thought. They were looking forward to it.

--------------------  
The ship descended into the atmosphere slowly. It was a massive thing, golden and triangular, and its mission was simple. To find out more about the lost civilization that existed on this planet.

Whatever sentients had existed on the planet disappeared a long time ago. The alien scientists on board had been to this planet before, and had pretty good idea of what happened to the people who lived there. It looked like they had used up so many of the planet's resources that they had to leave the planet. Their current whereabouts were unknown, and one of the goals of the expedition was to find out where they went.

A few cities still stood on the wind-blasted landscape, and it was over one such city that the ship was descending. An opening appeared in the bottom of the ship, and thousands of small probes flew out, exploring the landscape. One of them discovered a small, buried, and unusual looking underground chamber, and a small ship was sent down from the large one to investigate.

Five figures, all Yakanomere, got out of the ship. They went over to where the chamber was buried, and dug. It wasn't long before they broke through, and entered the room below ground.  
"What do you make of this, Zan?" One of them said.  
"This place looks old. I mean really old, dug long before this city was built."  
"You sure?"  
"That's what my instruments say." Zan was referring, of course, to certain mechanical implants in his body, not anything he was holding.

Zan glanced over to the far wall, and noticed writing. The equipment in his head swiftly translated it, and he gasped when he read what it said.  
"Barb! All of you! Look at this!"  
The five creatures read what was on the wall and gasped as well.

"So. The legendary Grail of Harakon-Zeth was buried here, of all places." One of them finally said.  
"But where is it, then?" Another one said.  
"You haven't seen the last part yet. It's in another language." Zan said.  
They looked at the last part, and the translator did its work.  
"Guess that explains it." Barb said, sighing.

THE GRAIL YOU SEEK IS NO LONGER HERE

IT WAS DESTROYED, FOR IT IS AN OBJECT OF FEAR.  
WHAT ONCE HAD THE POWER TO GIVE AND DESTROY,  
NOW IS GONE, INTO THE MAW OF THE VOID.

-YUMI ISHIYAMA, A DEFENDER OF EARTH

The End


End file.
